Contemporary security affairs depend on accurate and timely military intelligence; without them, security efforts can descend into farce or something altogether more dangerous: civil war. The role of intelligence is central to any serious attempt to end violence. Many important lessons can be learned from the United Kingdom's security efforts in Northern Ireland and the importance of effective military intelligence policy is one of these lessons. This article will show how damaging the ineffective and inefficient United Kingdom security policy was in Northern Ireland, how the lack of co-operation at a variety of levels acted to the detriment of the security situation in Northern Ireland and how this negatively impacted the ability of security force personnel to counter adequately the increasing violence.
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